Four Months in Budapest: Plastic Bags on my Feet???

Hi! Sorry, I know it's been a little while since I've last updated, but I was kind of waiting for some good stuff to talk about :)

I had a good Thanksgiving last week, I hope you did too! I really missed being home with all the football and food and everything, but it was ok. I went out to dinner with Mike, the only American at school who didn't go out of town. We couldn't get turkey, so we got Turkish! Haha hummus and pita!

The rest of last weekend was spent writing papers, or running. Lame, but it's done now and I'm basically finished with all my classes for the semester. This went way fast.

Margitsziget, where I go run

the running path :) haha

Monday, of course, was spent at Morrison's. I only have two more times to go there after this! I hope I can find a decent karaoke place in St. Louis when I get back. I highly doubt I'll find a place in Stl with the same spectacular drink specials, but we'll see. I'm going to enjoy being 21 I think.

For one of my classes on Tuesday, we were taken wine tasting at this fabulous wine cellar in the city center. Apparently it was the first cellar on the Pest side. I was surprised we were taken there actually, it was pretty high end. People buy expensive wines and then take them there for safe keeping, they had like a wine bank in the basement. We got an entire lesson on each kind of wine we tried too, the guy with us was really smart. I'd buy a bunch and bring it back, but each bottle was nearly $50 and up..soo... But at least it was a fabulous evening :)
I never was a wine drinker before coming to Europe. Mom and Dad would always offer at dinner, but I'm pretty positive I declined everytime. Probably because they only drink Merlots........

Wine

expensive stored bottles

Mike, Marcel, and I

Laurel, Erika, Mike, and I

Wednesday... Ok this whole week was basically just a food and drink fest. Wine tasting, then a farewell dinner at an all you can eat Hungarian food buffet, which was very tasty. I finally tried gulyas soup, turns out it's the same thing my mom makes. That beef stew, she knows what I'm talking about. It smelled the same, looked the same, tasted the same except there were different spices in this one.... I had no idea that's what it was. Potato dumplings, deer, yummy salads, corn and mayo (???), grilled cheese (literally just a piece of cheese, no bread), and a bunch of other things I had no idea..... I think I even tried shark. I don't know what shark is doing in a Hungarian (land locked!) restaurant, but it was there.

And since I'm going to put up pictures of the party I went to afterwards, I feel like I should include an explanation. It was a birthday party for one of the Spanish girls, and it was supposed to be a costume party. If you showed up without a costume, one of the girls hauled you into the bathroom and pained your face up....... Needless to say, she caught me.

Andrea, the guy in the top left, showed up without a costume like me, and was made into a girl for the night

Class was cancelled Thursday, but half of us didn't find out until we had already gotten to school. Everyone's sick, I haven't seen one of my teachers for two weeks now! Friday, I had a friend come visit for the weekend. His name is Thomas, he's from Belgium. He was an exchange student at SLU last year and was in APO with me. We had a pretty busy weekend, full of tons of walking. We went to the castle, Gellert Hill, Heroes Square... a sweet shop (too sweet actually, I can't believe I'm saying that... because nothing is ever too sweet for me...) and the Christmas market. Budapest has a great Christmas market :)